Medard

Medard
Coat of arms
Medard
Location of Medard within Kusel district
Coordinates: 49°40′5″N 7°36′52″E / 49.66806°N 7.61444°E / 49.66806; 7.61444Coordinates: 49°40′5″N 7°36′52″E / 49.66806°N 7.61444°E / 49.66806; 7.61444
Country	Germany
State	Rhineland-Palatinate
District	Kusel
Municipal assoc.	Lauterecken-Wolfstein
Government
• Mayor	Albert Graf
Area
• Total	5.99 km2 (2.31 sq mi)
Elevation	270 m (890 ft)
Population (2015-12-31)
• Total	483
• Density	81/km2 (210/sq mi)
Time zone	CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Postal codes	67744
Dialling codes	06382
Vehicle registration	KUS
Website	vg-lauterecken.de

Medard is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Kusel district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde Lauterecken-Wolfstein.

The municipality lies on the river Glan in the Western Palatinate at an elevation of some 160 m above sea level, mainly on the river’s left bank for a stretch of about a kilometre towards the northeast. The elevations around the village reach heights of roughly 300 m above sea level (Ohlbachskopf 316 m, Marialskopf 290 m). The municipal area measures 599 ha, of which roughly 25 ha is settled and 138 ha is wooded. The village is surrounded by slopes with meadow orchards. From Medard, outings for hikers and canoeists are possible.

Medard borders in the north on the municipality of Breitenheim, in the east on the municipality of Odenbach, in the southeast on the municipality of Cronenberg, in the southwest and west on the town of Lauterecken, in the west on an exclave belonging to the municipality of Grumbach and in the northwest on the municipality of Kappeln.

Also belonging to Medard is the outlying homestead of Bärenhof.

Most of Medard’s houses are found standing either side of the through road, Bundesstraße 420, branching off which are smaller sidestreets. The most important of these branching off to the south are a street leading to the former railway station and another leading to the former mill. In the area around the mill, nowadays known as Medardusquelle (“Saint Medardus’s Spring”), a bridge crosses the river Glan, which leads to the few houses that stand on the river’s right bank, and also to the sporting ground and to lands used for agriculture and forestry. Here on the right bank, two shaft kilns for making quicklime, in operation between 1820 and 1900, are preserved. The pretty old village church in the middle of the graveyard, the former school and the former Roman archaeological dig sites lie at the ends of the sidestreets that branch off the through road to the north. Here, too, a great new building zone spreads out. A very old gymnasium stands on the through road. Houses in the village core are as a rule simple houses, but there are also Einfirstbauernhäuser (farmhouses with single roof ridges), which are typical of the Westrich, an historic region that encompasses areas in both Germany and France. The inn and hotel of the Bärenhof stands at the side of the road leading to Odenbach and Meisenheim left of Bundesstraße 420. Once found in this area was a knacker’s yard. Medard was once also noted for its great number of houses with crow-stepped gables, of which nowadays only a single example is preserved; it stands on Mühlenstraße.